Wall Street has been saved, but it hasn't been reformed, warns Suzanne McGee, a longtime business correspondent and a contributing editor to Barron's. McGee takes a penetrating look at the forces that transformed Wall Street from its traditional role as a capital-generating and economy-boosting engine (the financial equivalent of a utility company) into a behemoth operating with only its own short-term interests in mind and with reckless disregard for the broader financial system.

"Business journalist McGee paints Wall Street as a utility with capital flowing through the system like an electric power grid, noting why it almost failed. She describes the pressure on the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008 to bail out Wall Street firms, why Wall Street was called an 'abstraction,' and how Wall Street morphed from an intermediary (raising capital) into a casino. Goldman Sachs was the master of its universe, generating average return on equity of 25.4 percent in the decade before the financial crisis, compared with 15 percent annually for four other firms during the same period. Other firms' CEOs chased Goldman Sachs, considering it their model for boosting their own personal wealth and keeping shareholders happy. The author reports, 'When left to their own devices, financial services firms . . . will focus almost monomaniacally on what is in their own best interest, seeking out ways to take higher returns and recruit top talent by paying the most lavish bonuses and offering the most enticing perks.... They cannot help themselves.' Excellent book."—Booklist